Farida Khalaf (born circa 1995) is the pen name [1] of a Yazidi woman who was abducted by ISIS in 2014 and sold into slavery. She escaped to a refugee camp, and in 2016 published a book about her experience, The Girl Who Escaped ISIS.
Khalaf grew up in the village of Kocho in the mountains of Iraq. In 2014, when she was 18, ISIS invaded her village. The jihadists murdered all the men and boys of age in the village, including her father and eldest brother. Single women and girls, including Farida and her friend Evin, were forced onto a bus at gunpoint and brought to Raqqa, where they were sold into sexual slavery. [2] She was once beaten so badly by her captors that she lost sight in one eye, and could not walk for two months. [3] The young women managed to escape to a refugee camp in northern Iraq, and Khalaf was reunited with surviving family members. Among members of her community, however, she was seen as having brought dishonor to her family by having been raped.
Khalaf subsequently moved to Germany, where she was granted asylum in 2015 and hoped to continue her studies to become a mathematics teacher. Her book, The Girl Who Escaped ISIS, was published in 2016 to positive reviews. It was co-authored by German writer Andrea C. Hoffmann, and translated to English by Jamie Bulloch. [4] [2] [5] [6] [7]
Jamie Bulloch is a British historian and translator of German literature, with over fifty published titles to his name, and twice winner of the Schlegel-Tieck prize.
The Sinjar massacre marked the beginning of the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. It took place in August 2014 in Sinjar city and Sinjar District in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate and was perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The massacre began with ISIL attacking and capturing Sinjar and neighboring towns on 3 August, during its Northern Iraq offensive.
Vian Dakhil is a current member of the Iraqi parliament. She is the only Yazidi Kurd in the Iraqi Parliament.
The Islamic State (IS) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a terroristic manner. Sexual violence, as defined by The World Health Organization includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” IS has used sexual violence to undermine a sense of security within communities, and to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery.
Quasi-state-level jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have captured and enslaved women and children, often for sexual slavery. In 2014 in particular, both groups organised mass kidnappings of large numbers of girls and younger women.
The condition of human rights in the territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS) is considered to be one of the worst in the world. The Islamic State's policies included acts of genocide, torture and slavery. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) stated in November 2014 that the Islamic State "seeks to subjugate civilians under its control and dominate every aspect of their lives through terror, indoctrination, and the provision of services to those who obey". Many Islamic State actions of extreme criminality, terror, recruitment and other activities have been documented in the Middle East.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi-born Yazidi human rights activist based in Germany. In 2014, as part of the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq and much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family, Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months, alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.
The Yazidi genocide was perpetrated by the Islamic State throughout Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017. It was characterized by massacres, genocidal rape, and forced conversions to Islam. The Yazidi people, who are non-Arabs, are indigenous to Kurdistan and adhere to Yazidism, which is an Iranian religion derived from the Indo-Iranian tradition. Over a period of three years, Islamic State militants trafficked thousands of Yazidi women and girls and killed thousands of Yazidi men; the United Nations reported that the Islamic State killed about 5,000 Yazidis and trafficked about 10,800 Yazidi women and girls in a "forced conversion campaign" throughout Iraq. By 2015, upwards of 71% of the global Yazidi population was displaced by the genocide, with most Yazidi refugees having fled to Iraq's Kurdistan Region and Syria's Rojava. The persecution of Yazidis, along with other religious minorities, took place after the Islamic State's Northern Iraq offensive of June 2014.
Yazda: Global Yazidi Organization, is a United States-based global Yazidi nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO) advocacy, aid, and relief organization. Yazda was established to support the Yazidi, especially in northern Iraq, specifically Sinjar and Nineveh Plain, and northeastern Syria, where the Yazidi community has, as part of a deliberate "military, economic, and political strategy," been the focus of a genocidal campaign by ISIL that included mass murder, the separation of families, forced religious conversions, forced marriages, sexual assault, physical assault, torture, kidnapping, and slavery.
The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq or CYCI foundation is a Canadian non-profit organization that aims to free Christian and Yazidi women captured and forced into sex slavery by ISIS.
Nareen Shammo is a Yazidi investigative journalist and a human rights defender.
Lamiya Haji Bashar is a Yazidi human rights activist. She was awarded the Sakharov Prize jointly with Nadia Murad in 2016.
Jacqueline Isaac is a Coptic Egyptian-American attorney and human rights activist, focusing primarily on the rights of women and minorities in the Middle East.
Dalal Khario is a Yazidi woman from northern Iraq who fled to Germany after escaping from ISIS.
Aliyah Khalaf Saleh, also known as Umm Qusay, is an Iraqi humanitarian who helped over 50 individuals escape persecution by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2014. She is widely regarded as being a folk heroine in Iraq.
The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State is an autobiographical book by Nadia Murad in which she describes how she was captured and enslaved by the Islamic State during the Second Iraqi Civil War. The book eventually led to the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Murad.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
Nemam Ghafouri was an Iraqi-born Swedish Kurdish medical doctor and practitioner. She was known for helping Yazidi victims of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Mediha is a 2023 American documentary film, written and directed by Hasan Oswald about Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad, who was kidnapped in the Sinjar massacre and sold into sexual slavery. Much of the footage in the documentary was filmed by Alhamad. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Doc NYC in New York City.